Note: This first segment is about the prequel to Madness Returns in order to catch people up to speed with the story so far. If you wish to skip ahead to the actual review, scroll until after the dotted line and start reading from there.

American McGee is a man of many twisted tales; what else would you expect from one of the designers behind the first two Doom and Quake games. After finishing his work on the four id games, American transferred over to Electronic Arts studios and became the creative director of his own, twisted child: American McGee's Alice. Released in 1998 on the PC, the game was to take place after the books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and star Alice in the disturbing role of a criminally insane patient.

After accidentally burning down her house and killing her family, Alice floats through life, an empty shell of a person, letting her dark and twisted thoughts take hold of her body; this, ultimately, leads to her institutionalization into the Rutledge Asylum. After spending so much time at Rutledge, Alice's mind slowly takes over her body and her corruption overpowers her last shred of sanity, sending her into a Wonderland she no longer recognizes.

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I will refrain from telling you the rest of the story as the game comes free with the purchase of it's successor: Alice: Madness Returns. If the game is bought on the 360 or PS3, you get a redeeming code to download it off of Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network, if you buy the game on PC, it installs into your program files folder right next to the "Alice2" directory. How nice of EA. Regardless of whether the free prize you get with the purchase is worth it or not, is the game you're actually paying for, Alice: Madness Returns, worth it? Find out after the Jump.

The story takes place shortly after the first game; Alice has returned back from insanity and plans on starting her life anew from an orphanage under the care of a psychiatrist who attempts to mend Alice's shattered mind with hypnosis; however, the past keeps interfering with her progress causing Alice to hallucinate at the most inopportune of times, resulting into her getting pulled back into the twisted Wonderland she endured in the first game. The story is surprisingly entertaining, definitely on the mature side of the story arc and not for children like the many movie renditions we have seen of the story in the past; many disturbing topics are touched upon, but not are as brutal as the ones near the end of the game, this is not a game for the light-hearted. Throughout the game you spend small portions of your time in the "real world", investigating the fire that killed your parents; these serve as the intervals between hallucinations and visits to Wonderland and are of minimal, but somewhat amusing, interactivity.

While walking around the old, desolate England of the 1800s, Alice may find herself butting into the conversations of the people littering the streets without the consent of the player. This helps enforce Alice's aggressive and sporadic behavior and is a nice touch to the unnecessary, but captivating character development used in the game. Along with her conversations with the people of England, Alice tends to act very "at home" with the people of wonderland, sometimes swapping unpleasant formalities as is the old English custom; add in a handful of smirking one-liners and sarcasm and Alice will standout as an interesting person in the video game industry that the player will either learn to love or hate overtime.

The old English setting itself is pretty standard with unique touches thrown in, smoke clogs the sky, the alleyways are dark, twisted and scary, and everything is cramped together in the poorly, designed, and dirty city, just the way it should be. Granted, these intervals aren't about Alice communicating with the local whore standing on the block, but as a story progressing mechanic and (re)introduction to characters from the previous game; although you will be lucky if you even remembered their names or mentions from the original Alice in the first place (I certainly do not).

While these intervals may be amusing for the brief amount of time that you spend in them, the real action take place in the corrupt Wonderland. Just like the first game, the many characters from the previous stories had either been driven insane or into hiding due to the unpredictable and dangerous changes made to wonderland; expect some unusual alliances and enemies to appear over the course of the game. However, despite all the madness cycling through Wonderland, it sure can look pretty at times and, whether in unintentional contrast or not, pretty drab as well. Some worlds, such as the forest, share their own unique and colorful look with the player while the more industrial areas are bland and mechanical, throwing in the occasional oddity to keep the player from losing their attention, although possibly not to the best of their ability. Funnily enough, as you switch from world to world, Alice's outfits also change to suit the setting, in the forest she wears her blue and white dress made famous by the Disney films while in the mechanical world she changes it out for a black dress with belt wrist covers and a metal corset.

Playing this game on the PC, I have not encountered any of the graphical glitches that other reviewers have pinpointed in their reviews. I have, however, come across an issue of severe stuttering. At one point I thought my computer wasn't capable of running the game on its native resolution; after decreasing the resolution, however, the frame rate still appeared suffer greatly. After stopping in place for a while, however, I was able to play the game normally without frame stutter until the next checkpoint. I also noticed that, during some of the more intense cut scenes, the game never slowed down, potentially eliminating the gaming rig and pointing the problem more towards the programmers. It may just be a problem with my computer however, I am not completely sure.

Remaining on the topic of graphics and performance, there is significant lack of detail in certain areas of the game. Anything that Alice directly interacts with (floating platforms, corridors meant to be traveled, etc.) were all polished to near perfection while distant object off the beaten path and not intended to be interacted with were rather bland and looked more like they were pulled from an early PS2 game. I also can't help but notice that everyone in reality had darker imperfect skin while Alice has a more pale yet flawless complexion; even the children were covered in warts and wrinkles while Alice looked like and untouched Barbie doll still in it's case; perhaps it was a designer choice based on the theme of purity, either that or oddity and uniqueness. Funnily enough, despite being an imaginary place in Alice's head, the characters of Wonderland don't fair any better; none of them have a perfect complexion like Alice and those who come close usually have some sort of deformity/oddity located somewhere on their body.

Make no mistake, the game is messy, and gory; expect lots of blood and many disturbing images to make their way into Alice's mind as she's hacking away at her old friends and enemies with an assortment of different weapons. That's right, for those who didn't know, the game has lots of combat scenarios with several different creatures, each creature standing for a different part of Alice's childhood or past. In order to combat these creatures, Alice finds several different weapons throughout her adventures to aid her in her quest for sanity. The standard weapon is a knife called the Vorpal blade (taken from one of Lewis Carroll's nonsensical poems), think of this as your go to weapon for fast, lethal strikes. The next weapon obtained shortly afterwards is the Pepper grinder, which shoots peppercorn at your enemies at high enough speeds to induce damage. Other weapons are unlocked later, but they are slower and more powerful counterparts.

The combat mechanics, in turn for your limited supply of weapons, are limited in the amount of options you can conduct Alice to do; this, however, doesn't stop the combat from feeling fun. The combat resembles that of a hybrid between the Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker; attack with simple combos, a dodge mechanic (her butterfly dash), and a targeting system, with the added ability to switch targets without having to exit from the targeting system. There is no way to switch up the combos other than by whether you want to slash an enemy two or three time with the blade before switching to a different weapon or dodging out of the way of an attack. Keep in mind however, you WILL need to dodge enemy attacks at some point in this game. The enemies have a tendency of surrounding poor little Alice and attacking in unusual patterns with the utmost of swiftness and accuracy.

It is also a good lesson to learn early on that shielded enemies will be the bane of Alice if you swing at their shields, their counterattacks are usually brutal and punishing. Teeth also play a big part in the combat. As you progress throughout the game, Alice will collect a number of teeth necessary in order to upgrade your weapons; not only is the strength of a weapon increased, but the combos are switched up and extra strikes are added in to help the player feel a more visual feedback from upgrading a weapon. All-in-all, the combat is one of the stronger points of the game, and this is with many thanks to a fusion of Zelda-esque combat and lightning quick reflexes to add an extra challenge without being too overbearing; not to say that it isn't without its flaws, the game still has a hard time following the basic laws of physics.

Platforming is another major mechanic in the game, taking up just about as much time as the combat (if not a little more depending on how you approach each situation). From the very beginning, Alice is capable of jumping and floating multiple times through the air, as well as mid-air dashing thanks to her "butterfly teleportation" ability. These abilities will help you progress flawlessly throughout the game with graceful ease. However, if you are planning on playing the game on the PC, I suggest you buy a controller; this makes the platforming segments significantly easier and will save many PC gamers from throwing their keyboards at their monitors since the mapped navigation keys are as good as they can possibly be... which is still to say pretty bad. Momentum is also non-existent in wonderland, you go from standing to running still in less than a split second and, despite the slope or incline, you stop just as fast. There is also no sense of speed when sliding down one of the many slides located throughout the game, possibly to make the sliding experience easier since there are traps riddling each slide; but still inexcusable on all counts.

Finally, air-dashing should not be used until after Alice has performed her double jump or anything past that whilst in the air, there have been many times where I have jumped forward, kept the control stick pushed forward, pressed the dash button, and, unwillingly, dashed backwards; whether this was intentional or not is still a big bother for people who like to short hop and dash like in other games of a similar nature. Platforming in Madness returns is pretty standard fair with the occasional quirk thrown into each new world to make it feel unique to the other, but the methods of surpassing each section comes down to the same strategy with different timings depending on the distance of the jump. If you do happen to die, the frequent checkpoints located throughout the game keep you from ever feeling frustrated.

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